Unreal Engine 3 now runs in Flash

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There are few commercial 3D games engines with as reputation as good as Epic Games‘ Unreal Engine. It is the number one choice for developers wanting to bring their games to major consoles, and is what makes the Gears of War games possible.

Now, somehow, Epic has managed to get Unreal Engine 3 running inside of the Flash Player. That means games running on the engine in your web browser, although good luck streaming all the data to texture those environments you see in the videos below.

The feat was shown off during the Adobe MAX 2011 conference yesterday, and used a heavily modified version of Unreal Tournament 3 along with Flash 11. Epic promises 60fps 3D games with visuals that are “console-quality.” That doesn’t give the achievement enough credit, though. Epic says what is being shown off actually looks better than the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.

With the introduction of Flash support I believe Epic has managed to make Unreal Engine available on every non-Nintendo platform. It’s always been on PC and Mac, has been available for years on Sony and Microsoft consoles, and last year made the jump to iOS and Android. Now we have the web, and don’t forget Facebook, to round out the selection.

Epic has also made it easy to start developing with Unreal as the engine is now free to download and use. You only start paying for it once you’re already making money selling games, and even then there’s a $50,000 buffer before the royalties kick in.

Check out the videos below to see what how good future web games could look: